Subscriber aggregation systems allow computer network users to simultaneously connect to multiple service destination networks. In order to obtain the services provided by different service networks, a subscriber will exchange data or control packets with the networks. This traffic may be received from the subscriber by a gateway in the upstream direction, then received from the service network by the gateway in the downstream direction.
Through the user of a specialized gateway, a subscriber may dynamically choose one or more types of services. Each type of service may have its own bandwidth requirements, as well as different pricing levels, in order to provide corresponding quality of service levels to its subscribers. Thus the bandwidth consumed by a subscriber in either the upstream or downstream direction may fluctuate with the services selected. Accordingly, the price a subscriber would pay for its subscription would also vary. For example, a subscriber may pay $19.95 a month to an ISP for basic service, while paying $39.95 for premier service. Additionally, sometimes a user may simultaneously subscribe to multiple services offered by an ISP, such as video service and Internet access, at different prices. The video service usually requires the higher bandwidth and the ISP has to provision the transmission media, such as digital subscriber line (DSL) to the acceptable high speed. Unfortunately, this allows the user to enjoy Internet at a higher speed as well, and an ISP may wish to charge more money for high speed Internet than high speed video services. These may collectively be known as Quality of Service (QoS).
The most common approach to handling these problems has been to use an Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) virtual circuit (VC) for each subscriber and to set a limit on the VC. This is known as traffic provisioning on a per subscriber line basis. However, there are several limitations to this approach. First, there may be more than one user on a subscriber line. For example, when the subscriber is a small company, there will be multiple employees who share the same line. This approach cannot differentiate between the users. Second, a user may have access to more than one service provider. Each service provider may wish to set its own limit. For example, one service provider may set a 1.5 Mb limit and another 0.5 Mb. This approach cannot apply different limits to different services, it is only able to apply an aggregated limit of 2 Mb to the VC as a whole.
What is needed is a solution that overcomes these limitations.